I had to order Tam Valley Frog Juicers for my Atlas switches, that doubles each switch's cost, then it doubles again with a Tortoise and Hare. If you pay retail and shipping, you can expect tp pay about $90 for each fully operational DCC turnout.
Yes, but in my opinion that's the price to be paid for having power routing prototypically looking turnouts : no ugly toy-like looking side mechanism, and electrical continuity that is not an unuseful luxury in our small beloved scale.. Dom
I could not have said it better myself! About 10 years ago, a long forgotten HO scale model railroader caught the last train to his final reward, and as is usually the case with our dearly beloved, they took the sawzall to his beloved railroad empire. The few things they thought salvageable, were being dumped on ebay, the DCC system, bulk Tortoises and Hares, bulk Rolling Stock, individual Locomotives, bulk unbuilt kits, and bulk junk box detail parts and miscellanea. Like always they want a quick sell. For $1000 I got about a 100 Tortoises, and 100 Hare's version 1. Version 1 of the Hare don't transpond the switch position to the DCC control station, so you have to use an initialization macro upon layout startup that excercises each turnout and leaves them set to your predefined route. Those are things I can be satisfied getting used, as we all know that they should last a lifetime, or two.
